The authorities tried to get these canons observed. Grostête sent back a curate who came to him for ordination “dressed in rings and scarlet like a courtier.”[301] Some of the vicars of York Cathedral[302] were presented in 1362 A.D. for being in the habit of going through the city in short tunics, ornamentally trimmed, with knives and baselards[303] hanging at their girdles. But the evidence before us seems to prove that it was not only the acolyte-rectors, and worldly-minded clerics, who indulged in such fashions, but that the secular clergy generally resisted these endeavours to impose upon them anything approaching to a regular habit like those worn by the monks and friars, and persisted in refusing to wear sad colours, or to cut their coats differently from other people, or to abstain from wearing a gold ring or an ornamented girdle. In the drawings of the secular clergy in the illuminated MSS., we constantly find them in the ordinary civil costume. Even in representations of the different orders and ranks of the secular clergy drawn by friendly hands, and intended to represent them comme il faut, we find them dressed in violation of the canons.
We have already had occasion to notice a bishop in a blue-grey gown and hood, over a blue under-robe; and a prior performing a royal baptism, and canons performing service under the presidency of their bishop, with the blue and red robes of every-day life under their ritual surplices. The MSS. furnish us with an abundance of other examples, e.g.—In the early fourteenth-century MS., Add. 10,293, at f. 131 v., is a picture showing “how the priests read before the barony the letter which the false queen sent to Arthur.” One of the persons thus described as priests has a blue gown and hood and black shoes, the other a claret-coloured gown and hood and red shoes.
Dns. Ricardus de Threton, Sacerdos.
But our best examples are those in the book (Cott. Nero D. vii.) before quoted, in which the grateful monks of St. Alban’s have recorded the names and good deeds of those who had presented gifts or done services to the convent. In many cases the scribe has given us a portrait of the benefactor in the margin of the record; and these portraits supply us with an authentic gallery of typical portraits of the various orders of society of the time at which they were executed. From these we have taken the three examples we here present to the reader. On f. 100 v. is a portrait of one Lawrence, a clerk, who is dressed in a brown robe; another clerk, William by name, is in a scarlet robe and hood; on f. 93 v., Leofric, a deacon, is in a blue robe and hood. The accompanying woodcut, from folio 105, is Dns. Ricardus de Threton, sacerdos,—Sir Richard de Threton, priest,—who was executor of Sir Robert de Thorp, knight, formerly chancellor of the king, and who gave twenty marks to the convent. Our woodcut gives only the outlines of the full-length portrait. In the original the robe and hood are of full bright blue, lined with white; the under sleeves, which appear at the wrists, are of the same colour; and the shoes are red. At f. 106 v. is Dns. Bartholomeus de Wendone, rector of the church of Thakreston, and the character of the face leads us to think that it may have been intended for a portrait. His robe and hood and sleeves are scarlet, with black shoes. Another rector, Dns. Johannes Rodland (at f. 105), rector of the church of Todyngton, has a green robe and scarlet hood. Still another rector, of the church of Little Waltham, is represented half-length in pink gown and purple hood. On f. 108 v. is the full-length portrait which is here represented. It is of Dns. Rogerus, chaplain of the chapel of the Earl of Warwick, at Flamsted. Over a scarlet gown, of the same fashion as those in the preceding pictures, is a pink cloak lined with blue; the hood is scarlet, of the same suit as the gown; the buttons at the shoulder of the cloak are white, the shoes red. It will be seen also that all three of these clergymen wear the moustache and beard.
Dns. Barth. de Wendone, Rector. Dns. Rogerus, Capellanus.
Dominus Robertus de Walsham, precentor of Sarum (f. 100 v.), is in his choir habit, a white surplice, and over it a fur amys fastened at the throat with a brooch. Dns. Robertus de Hereforde, Dean of Sarum (f. 101), has a lilac robe and hood fastened by a gold brooch. There is another dean, Magister Johnnes Appleby, Dean of St. Paul’s, at f. 105, whose costume is not very distinctly drawn. It may be necessary to assure some of our readers, that the colours here described were not given at the caprice of a limner wishing to make his page look gay. The portraits were perhaps imaginary, but the personages are habited in the costume proper to their rank and order. The series of Benedictine abbots and monks in the same book are in black robes; other monks introduced are in the proper habit of their order; a king in his royal robes; a knight sometimes in armour, sometimes in the civil costume of his rank, with a sword by his side, and a chaplet round his flowing hair; a lady in the fashionable dress of the time; a burgher in his proper habit, with his hair cut short. And so the clergy are represented in the dress which they usually wore; and, for our purpose, the pictures are more valuable than if they were actual portraits of individual peculiarities of costume, because we are the more sure that they give us the usual and recognised costume of the several characters. Indeed, it is a rule, which has very rare exceptions, that the mediæval illuminators represented contemporary subjects with scrupulous accuracy. We give another representation from the picture of John Ball, the priest who was concerned in Wat Tyler’s rebellion, taken from a MS. of Froissart’s Chronicle, in the Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris. The whole picture is interesting; the background is a church, in whose churchyard are three tall crosses. Ball is preaching from the pulpit of his saddle to the crowd of insurgents who occupy the left side of the picture. In the Froissart MS. Harl. 4,380, at f. 20, is a picture of un vaillant homme et clerque nommé Maistre Johan Warennes, preaching against Pope Boniface; he is in a pulpit panelled in green and gold, with a pall hung over the front, and the people sit on benches before him; he is habited in a blue robe and hood lined with white.
John Ball, Priest.